08-30-2021, 10:43 PM
Old habits die hard if they ever truly die at all. For the scarred brute, those habits present themselves in a barely palpable thread of tension which holds his large frame taut and at the ready even as he trails along at the side of the slender palomino, his attention split in between the pretty, little thing and the surrounding environs all the while. They're the habits of one accustomed to "sleeping with one eye open" as the saying goes. One always at the ready for a potential ambush which might lurk behind the next copse of trees. Not quite paranoid, no. But prepared? Definitely prepared.
Even so, he attends to the words spoken by the gilded mare with a hearty dose of attentive indifference -- golden eyes turning to fixate upon her as he drinks in the knowledge she imparts in regards to the various lands, though his features remain fairly expressionless while he does so. Inside, the gears are constantly whirring as he tucks away each little morsel of information, savoring it for the treat it is. Outwardly, they might as well be discussing the changing of the seasons for all the interest he shows.
But interested he is, indeed. This is exactly the sort of intelligence he had been hungering for ever since first arriving within Beqanna. Hyaline he mused, a spark of understanding flickering to life at mention of such a place being home to shapeshifters. He recalled the little colt who appeared to him in the midst of that lake where a russet and white orca had been mere moments before and suddenly, the pieces of that particular puzzle clicked into place. Expelling his breath on a quiet huff, he wondered again about the gold sabino filly he had seen walking upon the beams of light shifting atop the lake's surface. Had she been a shapeshifter as well?
Ponderings for another day, another time.
Drawing to a pause there at the edge of the creek, the midnight pegasus looked on with an idle sort of admiration while his far more dainty companion indulged in her drink at last, his molten gaze skimming the elegant curve of her neck, the way her markings gilded her very form, the -- the sea of wildflowers unfurling within his mind.
Blinking in response to that planted vision, so vivid as it shimmered there, awash in those vibrant colors of crimson and violet, he slowly turned his great skull so that he might look upon the palomino anew. As though he were seeing her for the first time. "How interesting," he expressed on a low rumble -- a near-purr -- to see each of those syllables being drawn out to their fullest extent and dripping from his velveteen lips in an unhurried yet purposeful cadence.
Though his ears flickered to attend to the various whispers of sound all around -- the rustle of leaves and wind, the cry of birds flirting with one another overhead -- his gaze remained firmly fixated upon the femme as she lifted her head from her drink at last and posed to him her own question. It was an easy enough question to answer and one he provided without pause. "Solaria," he confided before adding with a vague motion of his head in a general, westernly direction. "A land far beyond the sea."
This was the point when surely he should have felt some pang of homesickness or perhaps even loss, an ache for the land which was forever lost to him. For the family he had left behind to die. But Cassiell felt... nothing. Sentiment was an emotion he had purged from his body long ago, when he was still a young stud and in the throes of overseeing his first herd. One learned quickly enough that life was unkind and fate could be an exceptionally cruel mistress. There was no point in mourning the dead.
For mourning wouldn't bring them back to life.
But he knew his response to be lackluster where she had given him far more than he had asked for with his own inquiry. Exhaling on a low sigh, his well-muscled neck arching with the sound, he finally further expressed in his dark baritone: "It is no more, however. There was a surge of... something." Magic. He had felt that metallic tang upon his tongue on that fateful day back in Solaria. He hadn't known what it meant then, having grown up in a place where magic was seemingly nonexistent and he with his wings -- a gift from his Beqanna-born sire -- had been the most exciting exception to the norm. But he understood what it had been now, now that he could taste magic all around here. Now that he witnessed it every day. "I watched as the sea swallowed it whole," he finished at last, his tone exceptionally blase, as though he was speaking of another's life and not his own.
But there was no use living in the past when he had such an... interesting future ahead of him. Which brought him to his next question. "What quarrel does the north have with this Hyaline?"
Even so, he attends to the words spoken by the gilded mare with a hearty dose of attentive indifference -- golden eyes turning to fixate upon her as he drinks in the knowledge she imparts in regards to the various lands, though his features remain fairly expressionless while he does so. Inside, the gears are constantly whirring as he tucks away each little morsel of information, savoring it for the treat it is. Outwardly, they might as well be discussing the changing of the seasons for all the interest he shows.
But interested he is, indeed. This is exactly the sort of intelligence he had been hungering for ever since first arriving within Beqanna. Hyaline he mused, a spark of understanding flickering to life at mention of such a place being home to shapeshifters. He recalled the little colt who appeared to him in the midst of that lake where a russet and white orca had been mere moments before and suddenly, the pieces of that particular puzzle clicked into place. Expelling his breath on a quiet huff, he wondered again about the gold sabino filly he had seen walking upon the beams of light shifting atop the lake's surface. Had she been a shapeshifter as well?
Ponderings for another day, another time.
Drawing to a pause there at the edge of the creek, the midnight pegasus looked on with an idle sort of admiration while his far more dainty companion indulged in her drink at last, his molten gaze skimming the elegant curve of her neck, the way her markings gilded her very form, the -- the sea of wildflowers unfurling within his mind.
Blinking in response to that planted vision, so vivid as it shimmered there, awash in those vibrant colors of crimson and violet, he slowly turned his great skull so that he might look upon the palomino anew. As though he were seeing her for the first time. "How interesting," he expressed on a low rumble -- a near-purr -- to see each of those syllables being drawn out to their fullest extent and dripping from his velveteen lips in an unhurried yet purposeful cadence.
Though his ears flickered to attend to the various whispers of sound all around -- the rustle of leaves and wind, the cry of birds flirting with one another overhead -- his gaze remained firmly fixated upon the femme as she lifted her head from her drink at last and posed to him her own question. It was an easy enough question to answer and one he provided without pause. "Solaria," he confided before adding with a vague motion of his head in a general, westernly direction. "A land far beyond the sea."
This was the point when surely he should have felt some pang of homesickness or perhaps even loss, an ache for the land which was forever lost to him. For the family he had left behind to die. But Cassiell felt... nothing. Sentiment was an emotion he had purged from his body long ago, when he was still a young stud and in the throes of overseeing his first herd. One learned quickly enough that life was unkind and fate could be an exceptionally cruel mistress. There was no point in mourning the dead.
For mourning wouldn't bring them back to life.
But he knew his response to be lackluster where she had given him far more than he had asked for with his own inquiry. Exhaling on a low sigh, his well-muscled neck arching with the sound, he finally further expressed in his dark baritone: "It is no more, however. There was a surge of... something." Magic. He had felt that metallic tang upon his tongue on that fateful day back in Solaria. He hadn't known what it meant then, having grown up in a place where magic was seemingly nonexistent and he with his wings -- a gift from his Beqanna-born sire -- had been the most exciting exception to the norm. But he understood what it had been now, now that he could taste magic all around here. Now that he witnessed it every day. "I watched as the sea swallowed it whole," he finished at last, his tone exceptionally blase, as though he was speaking of another's life and not his own.
But there was no use living in the past when he had such an... interesting future ahead of him. Which brought him to his next question. "What quarrel does the north have with this Hyaline?"
cassiell
temperance is a virtue
@Aela